Nearly all measures of seasonal flu circulation in the United States continued their slow decline last week, but they stayed above baseline levels, making the season officially longer than average, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today.
Thirteen weeks has been the average span of flu seasons over the past 13 years, and last week marked this season's 14th week, the CDC noted.
The WHO notes signs that flu strains, especially avian ones, are co-circulating at unprecedented levels.
China's Guangdong province reported two new H7N9 avian influenza cases today, according to a report from Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection (CHP).
One of the H7N9 case-patients is a 3-year-old boy from the city of Heyuan, who is hospitalized in stable condition. The other infection occurred in an 18-year-old woman from the city of Foshan. She is currently hospitalized in critical condition.
Two of China's provinces—Anhui and Guangdong—reported a total of three new H7N9 avian influenza cases today, according to separate health department reports.
Highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu has infected six additional patients in Egypt, one of them fatally, since the last report, according to the machine translation of an update from the country's Ministry of Health posted yesterday by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board, continuing the uptick in cases there in recent weeks.
A new case of MERS-CoV and one death in a previously reported case bring totals since June 2012 to 900 and 383, respectively, in Saudi Arabia, according to a report today from the country's Ministry of Health (MOH).
Phylogenetic analysis of H5N8 and H5N2 avian flu strains from wild waterfowl and a captive gyrfalcon in northwestern states in December showed high similarity with Eurasian avian flu lineages, according to a study yesterday in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
An additional case of H7N9 avian flu in China's Guangdong province has been reported to Hong Kong's Centre for Health Protection (CHP), according to a machine-translated statement posted today by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced today that 141 measles cases have been reported so far this year, an increase of 20 since the agency's previous update on Feb 9.
Most of the cases—113 (80%)—are part of a multistate outbreak that originated with exposures at Disneyland, the CDC said. (The update does not name Disneyland, instead referring to it as an amusement park in California.)
The H5N1 avian flu virus has sickened six people in Egypt over the past 4 days, one fatally, according to official sources.
Few details are available about the patients, who are from five different locations in Egypt, according to government and media sources that health department announcements and were translated by FluTrackers, an infectious disease news message board.
